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Presents scientific papers related to health care and technology. "Choosing an Infertility Center in the United States of America: An Internet Based Approach," by Ahmed Mohamed Abou-Setta, et al; "Misinformation on the NET: Using Hereditary Hemochromatosis as a Model," by Randy Steven Alexander; "Management Conflict of Interest in Medical Education and Information: The Edott Portal," by Chiara Andreoli, et al.

Presents scientific papers on technology and health care. 'Medical Conferences in the Next Millennium: Just Point and Click,' by Ahmed M. Abou-Setta, Hesham Al-Inany, Ragaa Mansour, Mohamed Aboulghar and Gamal Serour; 'Role-Based Authorizations Using Mobile Agents in Healthcare Organizations,' by Dimitrios Baltatzis, Christos Georgiadis and George Pangalos; 'Patient Education by Using the Internet: The Experience With a Turkish Health Portal,' by Hakan Yaman and Aylin Yaman.

Presents information on studies on technology and health care. Use of telemedicine in traumatology and orthopedics; Impact of the Internet on the patient-physician relationship; Development of support tools for collaborative medical research using open source components.

Software reliability represents a topic of paramount importance in many sectors of industry and society. In addition to this, it is characterized by a high-degree of dynamism as shown in literature. Published papers have addressed this research from different points of view, leading to considerable efforts to get a complete overview of existing solutions. This paper focuses on metrics in software reliability in order to: investigate the state-of-the-art in the field of software reliability, synthesize available evidence of their usage, and identify the most popular ones. We have carried out a Systematic Mapping Study that structures and analyzes the literature on software reliability metrics, obtaining a total of 386 studies. On the basis of 128 selected primary papers, the results show an increasing diversity of work. They represent a valid starting point for selecting the most useful metrics for an assessment of reliability in a software system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstract of several studies on technology and health care. Information on territorial health information system; Development of an Internet-based integrated information planning system for radiotherapy; Research on a structured health resource guide in the Internet.

BACKGROUND: The Healthy China strategy is an important development objective of the 14th Five-Year Plan and Vision 2035 in China, while health service use in rural China has been a weak link in this strategy. OBJECTIVE: Nowadays, people's health service use will be influenced by digital technology due to the arrival of the Digital Age, and that is the reason why our interest is to discuss the effect of digital life on health service use among rural residents. METHODS: We use the data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 2020 to examine the effect of digital life on health service use among rural residents, and we use Instrumental Variables method to control the endogenous problem and use KHB model to discuss the mechanism of this effect. RESULTS: It was found that digital life has increased the health service use among rural residents significantly, and this result has been verified by robust test and Instrumental Variables method. Besides, digital life can increase health service use through the information channel effect and the health literacy effect indirectly. Moreover, digital life has a more significant impact on the residents with low social capital, low physical capital and low social trust, which represents the inclusivity of digital life. CONCLUSION: The results of our paper will be helpful to examine the effect of the digital policy on promoting the health service use in rural China, and our findings will provide evidence of how to use digital life to enhance health service use among rural residents. Based on this, the government should take measures to eliminate the digital divide between urban and rural areas by promoting the level of digital life among rural residents, paying more attention to the digital literacy development among them, and forging ahead toward the great goal of the Healthy China under the Digital Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of several studies on the Internet in medicine, including "How Will Electronic Records Revolutionize Healthcare?," by V. Wetekan, "Asklepios Future Hospital: OneIT: Larges IT Migration Project in Germany's Healthcare System," by U. Pöttgen and "Personal Health Records and Patient Empowerment," by D. Albers.

BACKGROUND: The global implementation of Electronic Health Records has significantly enhanced the quality of medical care and the overall delivery of public health services. The incorporation of Evidence-Based Medicine offers numerous benefits and enhances the efficacy of decision-making in areas such as prevention, prognosis, diagnosis, and therapeutic approaches. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this paper is to propose an architectural design of an Evidence-Based Medicine information system based on the Electronic Health Record, taking into account the existing and future level of interoperability of health information systems in Greece. METHODS: A study of the suggested evidence-based medicine architectures found in the existing literature was conducted. Moreover, the interoperability architecture of health information systems in Greece was analyzed. The architecture design reviewed by specialized personnel and their recommendations were incorporated into the final design of the proposed architecture. RESULTS: The proposed integrated architecture of an Evidence-Based Medicine system based on the Electronic Health Record integrates and utilizes citizens' health data while leveraging the existing knowledge available in the literature. CONCLUSIONS: Taking into consideration the recently established National Interoperability Framework, which aligns with the European Interoperability Framework, the proposed realistic architectural approach contributes to improving the quality of healthcare provided through the ability to make safe, timely and accurate decisions by physicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal or unpaid caregivers, commonly known as family caregivers, are responsible for providing the 80% of long-term care in Europe, which constitutes a significant portion of health and social care services offered to elderly or disabled individuals. However, the demand for informal care among the elderly is expected to outnumber available supply by 2060. The increasing decline in the caregiver-to-patient ratio is expected to lead to a substantial expansion in the integration of intelligent assistance within general care. The aim of this systematic review was to thoroughly investigate the most recent advancements in AI-enabled technologies, as well as those encompassed within the broader category of assistive technology (AT), which are designed with the primary or secondary goal to assist informal carers. The review sought to identify the specific needs that these technologies fulfill in the caregiver's activities related to the care of older individuals, the identification of caregivers' needs domains that are currently neglected by the existing AI-supporting technologies and ATs, as well as shedding light on the informal caregiver groups that are primarily targeted by those currently available. Three databases (Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Libraries) were searched. The search yielded 1002 articles, with 24 articles that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Our results showed that AI-powered technologies significantly facilitate ambient assisted living (AAL) applications, wherein the integration of home sensors serves to improve remote monitoring for informal caregivers. Additionally, AI solutions contribute to improve care coordination between formal and informal caregivers, that could lead to advanced telehealth assistance. However, limited research on assistive technologies like robots and mHealth apps suggests further exploration. Future AI-based solutions and assistive technologies (ATs) may benefit from a more targeted approach to appeasing specific user groups based on their informal care type. Potential areas for future research also include the integration of novel methodological approaches to improve the screening process of conventional systematic reviews through the automation of tasks using AI-powered technologies based on active learning approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recently, health care and disease prevention are more and more important in people's daily life. Human body communication (HBC) is an emerging short distance wireless communication mode, which is quite suitable for the communication between the wearable human health care equipment. However, most research on HBC mainly focuses on the electromagnetic model and the circuit model of equivalent human and the in vivo experiment is based on the commercial equipment.Objective: The aim of this paper is to design a circuit device for measuring the attenuation of the human body channel based on a floating-ground-electrode method.Methods: This paper proposed a new floating-ground-electrode method so as to solve problems of power and high frequencies interference and impedance matching. A circuit module, including signal generator, analog frontend circuit and MCU, was designed to initially replace the spectrum analyzer to measure the attenuation of the human body channel. The floating-ground-electrode added to the receiving end of the human body channel was connected to the ground of the analog frontend circuit, forming an equal potential circuit. The three-electrodes of the receiving terminal can act as a differential probe, since one electrode is connected to the ground and the other two electrodes achieved signal input and output respectively.Results: The results showed that the experimental data of channel attenuation were similar to the measured value of the spectrum analyzer. The maximum absolute error was 1.148 dB and the relative error was 3.55%. In addition, different sizes of the floating-ground-electrode cannot affect the attenuation path of human body channels. Moreover, the common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) was approximated to the value of the commercial differential probe.Conclusion: This paper proposed a new floating-ground-electrode method for measuring the attenuation of the human body channel. It could provide the possibility for the dynamic measurement of attenuation and take the place of the spectrum analyzer and make the process of experiments simple and efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The large number of dementia cases produces a great pressure on health and social care services, which requires efficient planning to meet the needs of patients through infrastructure, equipment, and financial, technical, and personal resources adjusted to their demands. Dementia analysis requires studies with a very precise patient characterization of both the disease and comorbidities present, and long-term follow-up of patients in clinical aspects and patterns of resource utilization and costs generated. Objective: To describe and quantify direct healthcare expenditure and its evolution from three years before and up to ten years after the diagnosis of dementia, compared to a matched group without dementia. Methods: Retrospective cohort design with follow-up from 6 to 14 years. We studied 996 people with dementia (PwD) and 2,998 controls matched for age, sex, and comorbidity. This paper adopts the provider's perspective as the perspective of analysis and refers to the costs actually incurred in providing the services. Aggregate costs and components per patient per year were calculated and modelled. Results: Total health expenditure increases in PwD from the year of diagnosis and in each of the following 7 years, but not thereafter. Health status and mortality are factors explaining the evolution of direct costs. Dementia alone is not a statistically significant factor in explaining differences between groups. Conclusion: The incremental direct cost of dementia may not be as high or as long as studies with relatively short follow-up suggest. Dementia would have an impact on increasing disease burden and mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text summarization techniques offer a way to address the significant challenges faced by clinicians and researchers due to the exponential growth of information in healthcare on the internet. By condensing lengthy text into concise summaries, these techniques facilitate faster, easier, and convenient access to relevant information. This is particularly beneficial in use cases such as online user feedback/reviews about drugs, where valuable insights can be obtained that extend beyond clinical trials and observational studies. This paper comprehensively evaluates six widely used text summarization techniques (LSA, Luhn's Method, Text Rank, T5 Transformer, and Kullback-Leibler, BERT) in extracting key insights, themes and patterns about drugs from online drug reviews. The evaluation considers both quantitative and qualitative aspects, focusing on their applicability to the challenging medical terminology, which is known for its inherent intricacies and complexities. The findings of this study showed the performance of text summarization techniques using metrics such as F1 score, Recall, and Precision, focused on the unigram, bigram, and trigram overlap between the generated text summaries and the reference summaries, utilizing the ROUGE-1, ROUGE-2, and ROUGE-L evaluation methods. It is shown that results showed TextRank to be the most effective text summarization method followed by BERT when working with Medical Terminology in Healthcare & Biomedical Informatics, given its complex hierarchy and extensive vocabulary of medical terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Hotel room cleaners are disproportionately exposed to hazards that increase risk for poor health outcomes. Interventions are needed to improve the health of these workers. Yet we know little about the expressed needs of hotel room cleaners nor do we know about managers' perspectives on how to best optimize employee health. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to develop an understanding of perceived intervention needs among hotel room cleaners and to assess managers' views on the acceptability of the proposed interventions. METHODS: We used a community-based approach to recruit study participants. We conducted five focus groups among hotel room cleaners and individual interviews with hotel managers. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using content analysis. RESULTS: The workers expressed needs centered on pay, workload, appreciation, ergonomics, chemical and biological hazards, nutrition, smoking cessation, exercise, mental health and stress management. In addition to echoing the workers' expressed needs, managers emphasized employee retention and financial literacy. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first paper to include both workers' and managers' accounts on intervention approaches that will optimize health and wellbeing. This paper offers a guide for future program development among hospitality workers. Effective interventions need to be integrated, encompassing the individual, intrapersonal, organizational, and policy levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Originally, digital healthcare was created to support underserved and rural patients gain access to health services. Phones, devices, and computers need IP (Internet Protocol) addresses to connect to the Internet.Objective: This paper aims to study the close relationship between the Internet and the transformation of healthcare services.Methods: The current protocol in use is the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), whose number of Internet addresses has been globally exhausted. The Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) with 47 octillion unique addresses for every person on the planet has become the only option for sustainable growth and innovation. However, most of the worldwide industry is still in IPv4. In the era of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Fifth Generation of Cellular Technology (5G), and Blockchain, there will be a massive need of IP addresses. For 2025, experts predict over 1.5 billion new IPv6 users which will continue to grow exponentially.Results: Nations need to tackle the increasing industry requirements for IPv6 and telehealth adoption to benefit from the full IPv6 connectivity which is the key strategic advantage for the healthcare industry.Conclusion: The strategic potential that telehealth brings to the healthcare industry is widely appreciated. However, what are the implications of its expansion around the world? How can we prioritize the poorest and most vulnerable in society without new technologies? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The development of antibacterial materials using various traditional food ingredients will be valuable to inhibit Helicobacter pylori in the future. The vegetables and herbs used in this study were food ingredients that normal people eat every day. This paper can be used as a resource for healthcare.Objective: This paper presents the design to investigate the antibacterial effect of 20 vegetables and herbs used as traditional food ingredients on H. pylori.Methods: The antibacterial effect on H. pylori was studied using the disk diffusion test on the activity of H. pylori. For the control group, 50 mg/ml of Metronidazol, a widely used antibiotic, was used. In particular, four herbs of Artemisia argyi, Scutellaria baicalensis, Annona muricata and Agrimonia pilosa were selected to measure the microbial viability assay, MTT assay, and antioxidant activity owing to the DPPH free radical elimination ability.Results: The measurement results showed that Annona muricata and Agrimonia pilosa had an antibacterial effect on H. pylori and all four herbs were safe in terms of cytotoxicity. The measurement results on the antioxidant activity showed that Scutellaria baicalensia was the best. Annona muricata and Agrimonia pilosa also had an antioxidant activity.Conclusions: The study results on antibacterial effect of traditional food ingredients of vegetables and herbs on H. pylori showed that Scutellaria baicalensis, Annona muricata and Agrimonia pilosa can be considered as healthcare functional materials through the inhibition of H. Pylori. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Person-centered care (PCC) requires knowledge about patient preferences. Among people living with cognitive impairments (PlwCI), evidence on quantitative, choice-based preferences, which allow to quantify, weigh, and rank care elements, is limited. Furthermore, data on the congruence of patient preferences with physicians' judgements for PCC are missing. Such information is expected to support the implementation of PCC; state-of-the-art medical care aligned with patients' preferences. Objective: To elicit patient preferences and physicians' judgements for PCC and their congruence. Methods: Data from the mixed-methods PreDemCare study, including a cross-sectional, paper-and-pencil, interviewer-assisted analytic hierarchy process (AHP) survey conducted with n = 50 community-dwelling PlwCI and n = 25 physicians. Individual AHP weights (preferences/judgements) were calculated with the principal eigenvector method and aggregated per group by aggregation of individual priorities mode. Individual consistency ratios (CRs) were calculated and aggregated per group. Group differences in preferences/judgements were investigated descriptively by means and standard deviations (SDs) of AHP weights, resulting ranks, and boxplots. Additionally, differences between groups were investigated with independent paired t-test/Mann Whitney U-test. Sensitivity of AHP results was tested by inclusion/exclusion of inconsistent respondents, with an accepted threshold at CR≤0.3 for patients, and CR≤0.2 for physicians, due to better cognitive fitness of the latter group. Results: Patient preferences and physicians' judgements did not differ significantly, except for the criterion Memory Exercises (AHP weights (mean (SD)): 0.135 (0.066) versus 0.099 (0.068), p = 0.01). We did not see rank-reversals of criteria after exclusion of inconsistent participants. Mean CR for patients at the criteria level was 0.261, and 0.181 for physicians. Conclusion: Physicians' judgements in our setting aligned well with patients' preferences. Our findings may be used to guide the implementation of preference-based PCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In healthcare (HC), Internet of Things (IoT) integrated cloud computing provides various features and real-time applications. However, owing to the nature of IoT architecture, their types, various modes of communication and the density of data transformed in the network, security is currently a critical issue in the IoT healthcare (IoT-HC) field. This paper proposes a deep learning (DL) model, namely Adaptive Swish-based Deep Multi-Layer Perceptron (ASDMLP) that identifies the intrusions or attacks in the IoT healthcare (IoT-HC) platform. The proposed model starts by clustering the patients' sensor devices in the network using the Probability-based Fuzzy C-Means (PFCM) model. After clustering the devices, the cluster heads (CHs) among the cluster members are selected based on the energy, distance and degree of the sensor devices for aggregating the data sensed by the medical sensor devices. The base station (BS) sends the patient's data collected by the CHs to the cloud server (CS). At the cloud end, the proposed model implements an IDS by applying training of the DL model in publicly available databases. The DL approach first performs preprocessing of the data and then selects optimal features from the dataset using the Opposition and Greedy Levy mutation-based Coyotes Optimization Algorithm (OGCOA). The ASDMLP trains these optimal features for the detection of HC data intrusions. The outcomes confirm that the proposed approach works well on real-time IoT datasets for intrusion detection (ID) without compromising the energy consumption (EC) and lifespan of the network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Wound monitoring is very meaningful for the clinical research, diagnosis and treatment. But the existing wound monitoring technology is hard to meet the needs of modern medical care in terms of real-time, non-invasive and anti-interference.Objective: To solve this problem, this paper proposed a new kind of monitoring technology based on the co-planar waveguide transmission line theory and assessed the application value of this method as a wound monitoring technology.Methods: The simplified wound model included the skin, fat, muscle, tissue fluid and bandage and a new co-planar waveguide sensor were designed and established. All of the simulation was achieved in the electromagnetic special software. The data processing method was based on the transmission line theory.Results: Detailed analyses of the results from the simulation were conducted. The sensor has a good monitoring effect in the low frequency band. The monitoring results could be influenced by the thickness of the bandage outside the wound. The thickness of the bandage should not be larger than 10 mm. The effective monitoring area of the sensor is 30 × 20 mm2.Conclusions: The proposed sensor based on the CPW transmission principle in this paper has good wound monitoring potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current health care scenario, security is the major concern in IoT-WSN with more devices or nodes. Attack or anomaly detection in the IoT infrastructure is increasing distress in the field of medical IoT. With the enormous usage of IoT infrastructure in every province, threats and attacks in these infrastructures are also mounting commensurately. This paper intends to develop a security mechanism to detect and prevent the black hole and selective forwarding attack from medical IoT-WSN. The proposed secure strategy is developed in five stages: First is selecting the cluster heads, second is generating k-routing paths, third is security against black hole attack, fourth is security against the selective forwarding attack, and the last is optimal shortest route path selection. Initially, a topology is developed for finding the cluster heads and discovering the best route. In the next phase, the black hole attacks are detected and prevented by the bait process. For detecting the selective forwarding attacks, the packet validation is done by checking the transmitted packet and the received packet. For promoting the packet security, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)-based hashing function is deployed. As the main contribution of this paper, optimal shortest route path is determined by the proposed hybrid algorithm with the integration of Deer Hunting Optimization Algorithm (DHOA), and DragonFly Algorithm (DA) termed Dragonfly-based DHOA (D-DHOA) by concerting the parameters like trust, distance, delay or latency and packet loss ratio in the objective model. Hence, the entire phases will be very active in detecting and preventing the two fundamental attacks like a black hole and selective forwarding from IoT-WSN in the health care sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging technology and innovation on sensing technology, data computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) has resulted in an accelerated development of smart healthcare. Feature extraction techniques based on time domain, frequency domain, and time-frequency domain have been used, and four different machine learning methods (decision tree, random forest, artificial neural network, and ensemble learning) have been evaluated. The paper " B Attention-based graph ResNet with focal loss for epileptic seizure detection b " by Dong et al. proposes an epileptic seizure detection system via modeling multi-channel EEG data with an Attention-based Graph ResNet (AGRN). [Extracted from the article]

BACKGROUND: Americans with disabilities have historically faced substantial barriers to employment participation. The state-federal vocational rehabilitation (VR) program has played an important role in increasing the employment opportunities of Americans with disabilities through the provision of services and supports designed to lead to high-quality employment, independence, self-sufficiency, and full integration into the community. OBJECTIVE: The Vocational Rehabilitation Technical Assistance Center for Quality Employment (VRTAC–QE) was designed to bring together the broad range of existing quality employment strategies and supporting practices, identify and implement new ones, and incorporate them into an integrated training and technical assistance plan, consistent with the circumstances and priorities of each State VR agency that requests technical assistance. METHOD: In the present paper, we present the results of a needs assessment survey conducted among State VR rehabilitation counselors and professionals in cooperating rehabilitation agencies and services. RESULTS: The purpose of the present study was to determine technical assistance and training needs of State VR counselors in four practice domains: (a) outreach services, (b) pre-employment transition services, (c) vocational rehabilitation services, and (d) employment services. CONCLUSION: Implications and future directions are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of a cubic bipolar fuzzy set (CBFS) is a new hybrid extension of the cubic set (CS) and the bipolar fuzzy set (BFS). A CBFS is a strong model to deal with bipolarity and fuzziness in terms of positive membership grades (PMGs) and negative membership grades (NMGs). A positive interval and a positive numbers represent a PMG to express the degree of belongingness of a specific property, and a negative interval and a negative number represent a NMG which defines the degree of non-belongingness of the specific property (or satisfaction level of its counter property). The aim of this paper is to define the cubic bipolar fuzzy topology under P-order (CBFSP topology) as well as the cubic bipolar fuzzy topology under R-order (CBFSR topology). We investigate certain properties and results of CBFSP topology and CBFSR topology. Topological structures on CBFSs are helping in the development of new artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for healthcare domain strategies and investigating various critical diseases. Such techniques allow for the early detection and investigation of diseases, assisting clinicians in minimizing the possible risk factors. An extended linear assignment model (LAM) and superiority and inferiority ranking method (SIR method) are proposed for healthcare diagnosis based on newly developed structures. The proposed LAM and SIR method are successfully applied for investigation of critical diseases. Moreover, we discuss a comparison analysis of investigations made by suggested techniques with some existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This paper analyzes ICT diffusion in the biopharmaceutical industry. Since new paradigms emerge in the industry towards precision medicine and fasten the digitalization of health care, it is necessary to measure the changing value system, especially between life science and the IT industry.Methods: The global value chain (GVC) concept is used and data are extracted from the Trade in Value Added (TiVa) dataset (June 2015) from the GVC-OECD project on interconnectivity of economics and industry. A number of indicators were selected: Foreign value added share of gross exports, % of ICT imported in chemicals as a final product, either exported or in use in domestic demand. Trade data are analyzed for two industries: chemical industry, including pharmaceuticals, and the ICT industry for a group of countries: USA, Switzerland, France, Germany, UK and Japan.Results: Only 0.5 to 1% of value added embodied in final chemicals and chemical products can be attributed to the ICT industry. An additional analysis shows higher prices of connectivity for services in the USA versus Japan and Germany, on a price index for a basket of broadband services (fixed and wireless, OECD 2013); this may also reflect the open model of US innovation with more transactions.Conclusions: Fast digitalization of life science requires new measures. TiVa dataset is useful for some IT equipment, but not sufficient for all forms of digital economy. The value chain concept is useful for pricing mobile computing in pharmaceuticals, but needs specific data on connectivity. Complementary datasets (e.g. EU KLEMS) can also track ICT investment in chemicals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to solve the trust problem generated by each node in the medical cloud system during the interaction process, a dynamic access control model based on trust evaluation is proposed in this paper. The model uses entropy weight method and fuzzy theory to fit the comprehensive interaction trust value of nodes, add the role-based two-way selection mechanism and third-party real-time monitoring mechanism for dynamic access control. Give the specific procedures and methods. Through simulation and comparison experiments with the classic Eigen-Trust model and RBAC, we can see that the model proposed in this paper has great advantages in dynamic controllability, time complexity and trust accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including efficient model for management of nursing resources; anti-obesity studies in healthcare technology; and effects on Helicobacter pylori of traditional food ingredients for healthcare.

A value-based strategy relies on the implementation of a patient-centered care system that will directly benefit patient care outcomes and reduce costs of care. This paper identifies the trends and approaches to artificial intelligence (AI) research in healthcare. The convergence of multiple disciplines in the conduct of healthcare research requires partnerships to be established among academic scholars, healthcare practitioners, and industrial experts in software design and data science. This collaborative work will greatly enhance the formulation of theoretically relevant frameworks to guide empirical research and application, particularly relevant in the search for causal mechanisms to reduce costly and avoidable hospital readmissions for chronic conditions. An example of implementing patient-centered care at the community level is presented and entails the influence of the context, design, process, performance and outcomes on personal and population health, employing AI research and informational technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Currently, in developing countries, there is considerable interest in using mobile phones as job-aids for community health workers (CHWs) to improve the care they provide. However, acceptance of new technologies can be inhibited if the workload imposed is perceived as excessive compared to existing methods. OBJECTIVE: To compare perceived workload of CHWs using clinical care guidelines presented on mobile phones versus using conventional paper-based guidelines. METHODS: Validated clinical practice guidelines were developed as Interactive Structured Rich-Medical guidelines (ISRMGs) on Windows Mobile 6.5 mobile phones. A prospective randomized controlled study was performed in Colombia in which 50 CHWs used the ISRMGs, and paper-based materials with the same information, in a cross-over design to diagnose and treat 15 matched pairs of medical cases presented on Human Patient simulators. The NASA Task Load Index, a validated measure of perceived workload, was administered and results compared by means of a mixed model analysis. RESULTS: When using the ISRMGs on mobile phones the health workers reported statistically significant decreases in mental demand, frustration, and overall workload as compared to using paper-based job-aids. CONCLUSIONS: Use of ISRMGs on mobile phones by community health workers in developing countries has the potential to decrease their perceived workload, fatigue, and enhance their ability to provide better care for more patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How robust is a healthcare system? How does a patient navigate the system and what is the cost (e.g., number of medical services required or number of times the medical provider had to be changed to get access to the required medical services) incurred from the first symptoms to getting cured? How will it fare in the wake to a sudden epidemic or a disaster? How are all of these affected by administrative decisions such as allocating/diminishing resources in various areas or centralising services? These are the questions motivating our study on a formal prototype model for a healthcare system. We propose that a healthcare system can be understood as a distributed system with independent nodes (healthcare providers) computing according to their own resources and constraints, with tasks (patient needs) being allocated between the nodes. The questions about the healthcare system become in this context questions about resource availability and distribution between the nodes. We construct in this paper an Event-B model capturing the basic functionality of a simplified healthcare system: patients with different types of medical needs being allocated to suitable medical providers, and navigating between different providers for their turn for multi-step treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tactical Combat Causality Care (TCCC) card is used by the combat medic who arrives at the battlefield location and analyzes the injuries, by documenting the treatment information and completing the field medical card. This field medical card is a standard method of communication between the combat medic and the combat physician who performs further treatments on the wounded soldier after retrieving injury records and treatment information from TCCC card. This process is time consuming and occupies the medics' hands preventing them from focusing on the treatment of the wounded soldier. This paper proposes a more efficient way to assist the combat medic by recording the audio and then converting it into text and then using information extraction techniques and pattern matching algorithms to automatically complete the TCCC card. This paper describes the proposed system and an algorithm to extract values for the TCCC card. The extracted values are then stored in a XML file and later parsed and stored in as a JAVA object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: In the COVID-19 pandemic, coordination was certainly late, also due to the scarcity of information disseminated at the very beginning of the pandemic, when countries were inevitably taken by surprise. The lack of information, mainly attributable to the country from which everything seems to have started, has produced a huge delay and numerous uncertainties in the feedback of the WHO and international organizations. OBJECTIVE: The inevitably relevant issue, from a legal point of view, concerns the legitimacy, formal or in any case shared, of the authority in charge of coordinating reactions and policies. The paper analyses the current legislation, soft and hard law, and the undertaken policies concerning emergency responses. METHODS: International and EU legislation analysis. RESULTS: The G20 understood that sustainable, flexible and agile funding systems for health emergencies are essential elements of pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. In EU there are many regulations about coordination and response to emergencies in practice in the EU and the Regulation (EU) 2021/522 (EU4Health programme), broadly extends the Union's competence in the field of health and has the objective of strengthening the Union's capacity for prevention, preparedness and rapid response in the event of serious cross-border threats to health. CONCLUSIONS: It is essential to formalize, within international agreements, the institutionalization of relationships, procedures, and the possible recognition of the reference figure. If in the European Union, at least partially, the protocols are there (even if the COVID-19 emergency has blown them up in principle), certainly in relations with non-EU countries the story is complicated, requiring specific agreements. This is the goal of the path started by the Rome Declaration of 21 May 2021 within the G20 – Global Health Summit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic represented a global earthquake that made the review of health policies aimed at strengthening common governance necessary. OBJECTIVE: The paper analyses the reasons for which the One Health approach has become fundamental in the control of pandemic phenomena, by arguing the necessity to place it at the basis not only of health policies but also of intersectoral policies. METHODS: The documents of the world organizations published before and after the pandemic were analyzed and studied in order to unpack the close relationship between new lifestyles and the increase of health risks. RESULTS: It emerged that the One Health approach is a paradigm that has been advanced for more than 30 years, but due to the inadequacy of local and world health policies, this approach was never translated into concrete actions to protect health, feeding problems at the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: Having ascertained that the adoption of a One Health approach can no longer be postponed, this must be insisted on several interconnected sectors that establish the new concept of healthcare which, in addition to being interdisciplinary, necessarily takes on a global perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of agent technology to the solution of problems in health care has in recent years become increasingly common. A workshop on this area of research was held as part of the 16th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-2004), in Valencia, August 2004, at which twelve papers were presented. This special issue contains extended versions of a selection of five of the papers presented at the workshop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last five years many research groups have applied agent technology to tackle problems in the health care domain. In the 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-2002), held in July 2002 in Lyon, there was a specialised workshop on this topic, in which 9 papers were accepted. This special issue contains extended versions of a selection of the papers presented at the workshop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biometric applications and healthcare systems are increasing day by day, but these applications and systems need to be more autonomous to cope with the increasing challenges of the medical world. Techniques of machine learning and deep learning play a vital role in developing autonomous applications in the medical field. [Extracted from the article]

Background: The present research aims to identify the application of social media for marketing or communication purposes in healthcare. We studied the opinion of healthcare professionals, organizations and health consumers, trying to identify the current status, trends and beliefs. The research reveals that healthcare organizations have to move forward and engage with their customers. The health consumers are more mature than the health providers. The descriptive characteristics of the sample's responses collected during the survey are presented.Objective: The current research tries to identify the application of social media for marketing or communication purposes in healthcare in Greece. The scope of the paper is to investigate the status in Greece and compare it with other countries.Methods: We studied the opinion of healthcare professionals, organizations and health consumers, trying to identify the current status, trends and beliefs. We formed adequate questionnaires which were distributed to the different target groups, while for statistical analysis we performed tests (in order to investigate the dependence between certain respondents' categories) as well as one-way ANOVA analysis for inference purposes. In this context, the results can depict the (average) behavior, as well as the homogeneity of the corresponding general population.Results: The research conducted took into account the individualities of the Greek environment and revealed that both physicians and healthcare organizations have to move forward in order to engage with their customers. There is also a clear need to measure the effectiveness of any such media marketing effort. Most adopters are not yet-taking maximum advantage of the technology. Social networks are prevalent and several paradigms support their adoption for marketing purposes in the sensitive healthcare domain. Even though the expectations are ambitious, there is a lot of work to do in Greece in order to achieve the desired outcome. An important finding is that patients' attitudes are, in general, differentiated from those of healthcare professionals. Even though the results of the present paper can be generalized, according to the statistical analysis performed, further research would be warranted to cover all possible participants in the healthcare chain. It is clear that both physicians and healthcare organizations have to adopt social media marketing in their daily practice in order to meet the needs of their customers. The present paper advances the current state of knowledge, as there is not any prior study on this field in Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the availability of data for addressing questions related to health insurance and health care and the potential contribution of a new household panel study. The paper begins by outlining some of the major questions related to policy and concludes that survey data on health insurance, access to care, health spending, and overall economic well-being will likely be needed to answer them. The paper considers the strengths and weaknesses of existing sources of survey data for answering these questions. The paper concludes that either a new national panel study, an expansion in the age range of subjects in existing panel studies, or a set of smaller changes to existing panel and cross-sectional surveys, would significantly enhance our understanding of the dynamics of health insurance, access to health care, and economic well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]